The VLW Blog

A Richmond jury has hit the city sheriff and his former chief jail doctor with a $2.4-million verdict for the 2008 death of an inmate from untreated bronchial pneumonia.
The verdict may be a record in Virginia for the death of an inmate. Plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Krudys of Richmond said he had not heard of a [...]

[Read more →]

The House of Delegates made quick work of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s veto of legislation that would raise the state’s cap on medical malpractice awards from $2 million to $3 million over 20 years.
After barely 10 minutes of discussion, the House overrode the veto this afternoon on a 93-7 vote, even more one-sided than the 89-7 [...]

[Read more →]

Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday rejected the compromise plan providing for annual increases in Virginia’s medical malpractice cap to the level of $3 million, saying Virginia’s current $2-million cap is adequate.
The plan for additional step increases was hammered out in negotiations among representatives of doctors, hospitals and plaintiffs’ lawyers – and all three groups had urged [...]

[Read more →]

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is keeping lobbyists and lawmakers waiting to see if he will sign or veto legislation to increase the cap on medical malpractice recoveries.
The deadline for gubernatorial action on bills from the 2011 General Assembly is tonight at midnight. McDonnell’s apparent reluctance to sign the compromise malpractice cap legislation led interested groups [...]

[Read more →]

The General Assembly has moved to increase the threshold for medical malpractice payments that trigger an automatic physician competency assessment. The legislation also would exempt doctors who no longer have an active practice.
A Virginia statute requires regulators to investigate doctors for three medical malpractice payments in a 10-year period. House Bill 2229 will increase the [...]

[Read more →]

Doctors who seek to avoid med-mal liability by petitioning to get a case before Virginia’s birth-injury compensation program can’t collect legal fees from the program.
In a Nov. 22 decision in In re: Subham Patel, the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission reversed fee awards to lawyers for a physician and her practice group, and lawyers for Bon [...]

[Read more →]

A trial judge’s comments about doctors leaving the profession because of rising med-mal premiums did not require reversal of a defense verdict in a premature infant’s med-mal suit.
Late yesterday, the 4th Circuit said that comments by Norfolk Senior U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar were not “plain error” that would win another trial for [...]

[Read more →]

The Supreme Court of Virginia adopts today a five-part test for determining whether an inadvertent disclosure of a document covered by the attorney-client privilege waives the privilege.
The issue in Walton v. Mid-Atlantic Spine Specialists PC arose after a letter from an orthopedic surgeon to his attorney was copied by a company the surgeon’s practice had [...]

[Read more →]

A med-mal plaintiff can tack on court costs to his $1.8 million jury award, a Richmond federal court says.
U.S. District Judge Robert Payne rejected a surgeon’s claim that paying his former patient $2,706.88 in costs would bump the award beyond Virginia’s statutory cap.
Plaintiff Wendell Waggener sued Dr. Steven J. Oltermann and his employer, Northern Neck [...]

[Read more →]

This paper has reported on some high-dollar med-mal cases involving Caesarean sections, but an unpublished 4th Circuit case out of Roanoke offers a new twist.
Nickeshia M. Lawrence sued Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital for medical malpractice in failing to perform a Caesarean section when she was giving birth to her son.
After a five-day trial, the jury [...]

[Read more →]